The Arrow of Gold

Dona Rita said to me once with humorous resignation: “You know, it appears that one must have a name.  That’s what Henry Allegre’s man of business told me.  He was quite impatient with me about it.  But my name, amigo, Henry Allegre had taken from me like all the rest of what I had been once.  All that is buried with him in his grave.  It wouldn’t have been true.  That is how I felt about it.  So I took that one.”  She whispered to herself: “Lastaola,” not as if to test the sound but as if in a dream.

To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the name of any human habitation, a lonely caserio with a half-effaced carving of a coat of arms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with a stony slope at the back.  It might have been a hill for all I know or perhaps a stream.  A wood, or perhaps a combination of all these: just a bit of the earth’s surface.  Once I asked her where exactly it was situated and she answered, waving her hand cavalierly at the dead wall of the room: “Oh, over there.”  I thought that this was all that I was going to hear but she added moodily, “I used to take my goats there, a dozen or so of them, for the day.  From after my uncle had said his Mass till the ringing of the evening bell.”

I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some time ago by a few words from Mr. Blunt, populated by the agile, bearded beasts with cynical heads, and a little misty figure dark in the sunlight with a halo of dishevelled rust-coloured hair about its head.

The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her.  It was really tawny.  Once or twice in my hearing she had referred to “my rust-coloured hair” with laughing vexation.  Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints of civilization, and often in the heat of a dispute getting into the eyes of Madame de Lastaola, the possessor of coveted art treasures, the heiress of Henry Allegre.  She proceeded in a reminiscent mood, with a faint flash of gaiety all over her face, except her dark blue eyes that moved so seldom out of their fixed scrutiny of things invisible to other human beings.

“The goats were very good.  We clambered amongst the stones together.  They beat me at that game.  I used to catch my hair in the bushes.”

“Your rust-coloured hair,” I whispered.

“Yes, it was always this colour.  And I used to leave bits of my frock on thorns here and there.  It was pretty thin, I can tell you.  There wasn’t much at that time between my skin and the blue of the sky.  My legs were as sunburnt as my face; but really I didn’t tan very much.  I had plenty of freckles though.  There were no looking- glasses in the Presbytery but uncle had a piece not bigger than my two hands for his shaving.  One Sunday I crept into his room and had a peep at myself.  And wasn’t I startled to see my own eyes looking at me!  But it was fascinating, too.  I was about eleven years old then, and I was very friendly with the goats, and I was as shrill as a cicada and as slender as a match.  Heavens!  When I overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs, it doesn’t seem to be possible.  And yet it is the same one.  I do remember every single goat.  They were very clever.  Goats are no trouble really; they don’t scatter much.  Mine never did even if I had to hide myself out of their sight for ever so long.”

It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide, and she uttered vaguely what was rather a comment on my question:

“It was like fate.”  But I chose to take it otherwise, teasingly, because we were often like a pair of children.

“Oh, really,” I said, “you talk like a pagan.  What could you know of fate at that time?  What was it like?  Did it come down from Heaven?”

“Don’t be stupid.  It used to come along a cart-track that was there and it looked like a boy.  Wasn’t he a little devil though.  You understand, I couldn’t know that.  He was a wealthy cousin of mine.  Round there we are all related, all cousins—as in Brittany.  He wasn’t much bigger than myself but he was older, just a boy in blue breeches and with good shoes on his feet, which of course interested and impressed me.  He yelled to me from below, I screamed to him from above, he came up and sat down near me on a stone, never said a word, let me look at him for half an hour before he condescended to ask me who I was.  And the airs he gave himself!  He quite intimidated me sitting there perfectly dumb.  I remember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of my skirt as I sat below him on the ground.

“C’est comique, eh!” she interrupted herself to comment in a melancholy tone.  I looked at her sympathetically and she went on:

“He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles down the slope.  In winter they used to send him to school at Tolosa.  He had an enormous opinion of himself; he was going to keep a shop in a town by and by and he was about the most dissatisfied creature I have ever seen.  He had an unhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he was always wretched about something: about the treatment he received, about being kept in the country and chained to work.  He was moaning and complaining and threatening all the world, including his father and mother.  He used to curse God, yes, that boy, sitting there on a piece of rock like a wretched little Prometheus with a sparrow pecking at his miserable little liver.  And the grand scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!”

She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with something generous in it; not infectious, but in others provoking a smile.

“Of course I, poor little animal, I didn’t know what to make of it, and I was even a little frightened.  But at first because of his miserable eyes I was sorry for him, almost as much as if he had been a sick goat.  But, frightened or sorry, I don’t know how it is, I always wanted to laugh at him, too, I mean from the very first day when he let me admire him for half an hour.  Yes, even then I had to put my hand over my mouth more than once for the sake of good manners, you understand.  And yet, you know, I was never a laughing child.

“One day he came up and sat down very dignified a little bit away from me and told me he had been thrashed for wandering in the hills.

“‘To be with me?’ I asked.  And he said: ‘To be with you!  No.  My people don’t know what I do.’  I can’t tell why, but I was annoyed.  So instead of raising a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose he expected me to do, I asked him if the thrashing hurt very much.  He got up, he had a switch in his hand, and walked up to me, saying, ‘I will soon show you.’  I went stiff with fright; but instead of slashing at me he dropped down by my side and kissed me on the cheek.  Then he did it again, and by that time I was gone dead all over and he could have done what he liked with the corpse but he left off suddenly and then I came to life again and I bolted away.  Not very far.  I couldn’t leave the goats altogether.  He chased me round and about the rocks, but of course I was too quick for him in his nice town boots.  When he got tired of that game he started throwing stones.  After that he made my life very lively for me.  Sometimes he used to come on me unawares and then I had to sit still and listen to his miserable ravings, because he would catch me round the waist and hold me very tight.  And yet, I often felt inclined to laugh.  But if I caught sight of him at a distance and tried to dodge out of the way he would start stoning me into a shelter I knew of and then sit outside with a heap of stones at hand so that I daren’t show the end of my nose for hours.  He would sit there and rave and abuse me till I would burst into a crazy laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through the leaves rolling on the ground and biting his fists with rage.  Didn’t he hate me!  At the same time I was often terrified.  I am convinced now that if I had started crying he would have rushed in and perhaps strangled me there.  Then as the sun was about to set he would make me swear that I would marry him when I was grown up.  ‘Swear, you little wretched beggar,’ he would yell to me.  And I would swear.  I was hungry, and I didn’t want to be